Posted
by
timothy
on Thursday June 24, 2010 @03:25PM
from the now-that's-forward-thinking dept.

epiphani writes "Byron Sonne, of Toronto, was arrested today by a task force of around 50 police officers associated with the G20 summit taking place this week. An independent contractor, IT security specialist and private investigator, he had notable ties to the Toronto technology and security communities. According to friends and associates, he had been purchasing goods online and speaking with security groups about building devices to collect unencrypted police broadcasts and relay them through Twitter, as well as other activities designed to test the security of the G20 summit. By all accounts, it would appear that Mr. Sonne had no actual malicious intent. In Canada, the summit has been garnering significant press for the cost and invasive nature of the security measures taken." "By all accounts" may not be quite right; the charges against Sonne, exaggerated or not, involve weapons, explosives, and intimidation.

And the relationship with Poland will never be the same as Canadian politicians blocked Polish attempts to exercise an agreement allowing independent investigation of incidents involving Polish Nationals in Canada.

Being Canada I hope someone named some farm animals after the politicians involved.

A former Winnipeg police officer was given a conditional sentence of two years less a day Monday for killing a woman in a car accident on the outskirts of the city in 2005.

...

In a deal with prosecutors, Harveymordenzenk pleaded guilty in July to a single charge of dangerous driving causing death in the crash that killed Crystal Ann Taman, a 40-year-old mother of three whose convertible w

They have appointed a special prosecutor and it is likely that those murdering murderers that murdered Dziekanski will face criminal charges.

Now, those charges might be perjury, which is unfair, but there are ~30 million of us who want those murdering murderers that murdered Dziekanski put into prison. I'd accept any charges that put them in jail.

When I just read that my heart kind of sank. Is there anything more tragic then a group of people in supposed authority harming another man? Sigh.

Oh, lying about it. Covering it up. Denying it happened until the video surfaced. Discrediting the poor sod they killed and the guy who took the only video that proved it happened. Confiscating the video and refusing to give it back. Using Taser's BS "excited delirium" argument to say that it wasn't the Taser that killed him, but his own body. Avoiding all criminal responsibility. Still being active police officers.

The bottom is a long way down, and the tragedy runs pretty deep on this one. They didn't even try to resolve this peacefully, they just went straight to over-use of force.

I've heard of people being arrested in the US for possession of burglary tools. Well, tools for the commission of a crime. That can simply be a hammer, screwdriver, and pry bar. The hammer and screwdriver could simply have been in a toolbox, and the "pry bar" can frequently be found as standard equipment in the vehicle with the jack, if it had hubcaps.

These two counts caught my eye:

Intimidation of a justice system participant by threat.Intimidation of a justice system partic

Intimidation of a justice system participant by threat.
Intimidation of a justice system participant by watch and beset.

It sounds like this wasn't only involved with his other plans, but I'd guess "justice systems participant" could be law enforcement. I'm not that familiar with Canadian law, so it's just a guess. If he made direct threats of some sort, then that changes the whole ballgame.

Claiming he will eavesdrop on the police covers both of those. He made the threat that he will do it, and he was going to eavesdrop (watch) the police.

An event like this involves more than three days in execution. There are months of planning involved. That costs money. Resources are tied up in advance of the event. That costs money. I would like to see an itemized accounting for this event.

The question that should be asked in the first place - why the hell do 20 people (they're still people, not Cthulhu-sized monstrosities, despite the fact that they're G20 leaders) need to meet in person in a highly publicized event in a middle of a large city just to discuss some matters, no matter how important? I'd bet most of the bill - which doesn't even account for major inconveniences to the locals - is due to that alone.

Just give them a cruise ship with an armed escort, and be done with it already. T

"building devices to collect unencrypted police broadcasts and relay them through twitter".

He's building a common police scanner? Anything of interest will be encrypted. Regular Toronto Police Service is analog though but hardly anything that can be pickup up from them will be sensitive. I suspect the explosives on hand had way more to do with it. He may be smart but that was a dumbass move.

It's been awhile since I got my Canadian Ham license, but I seem to remember learning that it was illegal to rebroadcast, (or talk about, publish, whatever) anything that you heard on the airwaves. I.e. cop, fire, air control, taxi, etc chatter.

It's been awhile since I got my Canadian Ham license, but I seem to remember learning that it was illegal to rebroadcast, (or talk about, publish, whatever) anything that you heard on the airwaves. I.e. cop, fire, air control, taxi, etc chatter.

Same in the U.S., but it's not specific to having a ham license, it applies to anyone with a scanner or other equipment capable of receiving public service transmissions.

That was what I felt too. It's like testing the security of your house by posting an add on craigslist telling people when I'm leaving, and when I'll be back. Not really a good idea, epsecially since every 100th craigslist reader has a brain, and that one guy might be a robber who would bring a pair of cable cutters to drop the phone / power lines.

Even if security WAS good enough, damage still occurs to the house. The "telcom integrity" gets degraded... the

It doesn't matter if he had malicious intent or not. The police had no way of knowing for sure what his real goals were. He appeared to be gearing up to do something naughty, and they caught on and stopped him.

All they knew was that some lone wolf out there not associated with the government was trying to crack through G20 security, for *whatever* reason.

Oblig. car analogy: If I was arrested trying to break into someone's car, would the police let me go if I told them I was just moving it so the nice chap who owns it doesn't get towed for parking in a fire lane?

Read the article"But quite clearly if an individual comes down into the area, is engaged in protest activity and is carrying things that could be used as a weapon, that matter's going to be investigated by the police and those items can be removed from that individual in the interests of maintaining a safe environment for everybody."

I don't know about his link to protest activity. He had a john-boat tied to the roof of his car. I don't know for sure, but normally one doesn't bring a 14 foot aluminum boat to a protest rally on a downtown street.

From where I am seated, the fellow is "alleged" to have been involved in "protest activity".

What forces are at work on the source? It appears to be no more than a mainstream Canadian news outlet.

Seems possible that the television-addicted diet-cola-addled Canadians will scoop it up with the same glee that television-addicted diet-cola-addled Americans accept the heavily weighted spins of FOX and CNN.

Oblig. car analogy: If I was arrested trying to break into someone's car, would the police let me go if I told them I was just moving it so the nice chap who owns it doesn't get towed for parking in a fire lane?

The difference being that you'd definitely get convicted for that.

If you were just looking in the window of the car to make sure the person remembered to lock the door, they'd have nothing to convict you with (though they could still arrest you).

Oblig. car analogy: If I was arrested trying to break into someone's car, would the police let me go if I told them I was just moving it so the nice chap who owns it doesn't get towed for parking in a fire lane?

Exactly. I work in an office across the street from where the G20 is meeting. If you look out the window you can see the snipers all over the rooftops scanning with their binoulars. Would it be a smart idea to sneak around the window with something that could be mistaken for a rifle, just to test security? Probably not.

About 3 weeks ago, a guy bought 1.6T of fertilizer [www.cbc.ca]. Usual stuff, people went nuts, police went nuts lookin' for the guy. They found out that it was a farmer, going on about his normal farming business. This guy however is an idiot, ever since the mid-90's purchases of fertilizer have been tracked in Canada.

While I don't know the details on what all is is alleged to have done -- he did set a goal to deliberately try to see if they would detect his behavior. He was planning on sending emails with words that would get him flagged by any hypothetical electronic searches they were running, and generally trying to look suspicious to see if they've noticed him. All in the name of seeing what kind of security they had in place, and how well it works.

He may well be completely innocent, a crack-pot, or just some misguided hacker who thinks it's his job to "take on the man". But, it's kind of like trying to get the bull to chase you -- you might not like it when he does. I'm pretty sure they've made trying to identify/breach their security procedures illegal.

The geek and hacker in me applauds such a balsy move. The pragmatist in me thinks he might have tried just a little too hard to get noticed. I mean, antagonizing an already skittish security apparatus... not the smartest move you can make.:-P

Kudos to this guy for answering a curiosity of mine: I've always wondered what would actually happen if I sent a bunch of e-mails with phrases like "bomb the G20 summit", "death to the capitalist swine" and "one hundred pounds of nitrated fertilizer". I guess now we know.

Kudos to this guy for answering a curiosity of mine: I've always wondered what would actually happen if I sent a bunch of e-mails with phrases like "bomb the G20 summit", "death to the capitalist swine" and "one hundred pounds of nitrated fertilizer". I guess now we know.

My understanding is that there's nothing illegal about your post.

If Sonne was arrested for doing what you just did (or similar), and gets convicted, it will be a sad day for Canada.

Hopefully he was smart and had a big bag of seeds sitting on top of the fertilizer, if that is what he did, so he could be like "mind the sunflowers, thanks" when the cops busted his door.

Testing security is well and good, but if you don't have an innocuous reason for tripping the system, you tend to be indistinguishable from a criminal and are likely to be convicted as such, despite protestations of "just testing".

While I don't know the details on what all is is alleged to have done -- he did set a goal to deliberately try to see if they would detect his behavior. He was planning on sending emails with words that would get him flagged by any hypothetical electronic searches they were running, and generally trying to look suspicious to see if they've noticed him. All in the name of seeing what kind of security they had in place, and how well it works.

I must say this is a fine operation you run here. However, I believe your security seems to be lacking. What's to stop an armed man, such as myself carrying these concealed sidearms, from wreaking havoc on your customers and property? Hacking your wi-fi to access and broadcast transaction data to twitter was also a cake walk. Did you honestly think I couldn't get past such simple passwords? Also, I think you could of easily prevented me from rigging your exits with explosives, made from cheap fertilizer I bought and are set to blow should anyone try to escape.

Therefore, I would like to offer you my security consulting services. I think my demonstration speaks for itself but here are some references.

Need to use the phone? Oh I guess its just to call my references.

That's strange, I don't think any of them had numbers that start with 911...

Excatly this. If the cop brass didn't hire him explicitly to test their security measures then as far as the cops are concerned his self-proclaimed tests were suspicious behaviour at best and illegal at worst. The guy is an idiot for even attempting to do so. What exactly did he think was going to happen?

Many hackers seem to have this ethos of "If I CAN do it then it is ok for me to do." If they can break in to a system, it is ok for them to do in their mind. They figure the person who owns it should have secured it better. Something tells me they would not be nearly so amused if I applied the same thing to their house. "Oh hey! Ya I've been sleeping on your couch watching TV. Well it was really your problem after all, your lock wasn't very good, I picked it easily and your alarm was defeated by just cutting the power and battery cable in it. Don't get made at ME, if you don't want me here YOU should have secured your house better!"

I think hacker types need to remember basic kindergarten etiquette: Don't touch what isn't your without asking first. If you want to learn how to break in to computers that is wonderful, but do it on your own. Don't go and try to get in to other's stuff.

If he, and enough other people, did this there would be a lot of resources being tied up running down these "tests". This may allow a real threat to slip in and people be killed because all the resources are tied up. It is along the same line as to why it is illegal to call in a false fire report. The real fire across town burns while the truck is responding to the false call. Sorry but "I was just testing the response time" is not a valid excuse.

That depends on the nature of the test. If it's just the capture and rebroadcasting of police broadcasts, there shouldn't be much if any disruption. If he's jumping turn-stiles or planting fake bombs, then sure that's a problem.

Using that logic though, by tying up the resources necessary to arrest this guy, a real threat may have slipped by unnoticed (assuming that this guy wasn't a real threat).

Googling his name and filtering out (as best I can) the plethora of reprints of this article, it looks like the "explosives" were deliberate acquisition of ingredients to see what it would take to provoke a response. I guess he found out.

As far as "weapons" was concerned, I don't know enough about Canadian law -- what is and is not classed as a "weapon" -- to speculate. But his linkedin says he's a licensed private investigator, and in many areas where it's otherwise impossible, a valid PI license sometimes allows a person to carry concealed. So, he could have legally owned a firearm.

I suspect that to a certain extent this is another example of the "kitchen sink" approach to high-profile arrests, and some of these charges will be dropped in plea negotiations.

Or, I dunno, he could really be a nut. But I don't think so. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

So he wanted to test security and was caught. Sounds like his test worked great. He should be very please with himself. When he gets out he should test US government security by pulling a gun during on the POTUS during a speech.

Can you picture a force of 50 officers coming to arrest one person? The need for "security" has become so overdone since 911 it's beyond ridiculous. 50 officers is not a "task force". It's a fucking ARMY. No bloody wonder that Canada has spent over a BILLION DOLLARS [theglobeandmail.com] on security for the G20 summit. What an incredible waste.

"You are free of all charges but marked potentially dangerous to the event. A police officer (a security expert) will accompany you at all times until after the summit, and will report all your moves. Do not avoid said officer nor try to conceal your activity from them. You are welcome to continue testing the security like you did so far, in fact we specifically request you to do so. Of course, if any of your routes appears to have a chance to succeed, we will stop you, but you will suffer no consequences. After all, what good is finding security flaws for if they are not reported to the maintainer and given a chance to be patched? So keep poking at our security, please, just don't keep us in the dark about what you find, and don't be surprised if you trigger some traps and alarms we set up."

Also, not updating his facebook with a better, less sullen and crazy looking photo. Before I ever do something like that, I'm going to get a photo of me like playing with kittens or something. Let 'em run that on the news. Not "American Gothic minus the Daughter..."

"By all accounts" may not be quite right; the charges against Sonne, exaggerated or not, involve weapons, explosives and intimidation.

Can't you be charged with just about anything a police officer deems necessary to bring you into the station, but you aren't guilty of any of them until proven so? I thought that's how it worked but clearly I'm mistaken.

Though, I mean, the question of Malicious intent does bring up some good points. If I fire a weapon to shoot an Apple off someones head and I miss and end up murdering them, despite how un-malicious my intent is, do I still have to pay for the crime?

"By all accounts" may not be quite right; the charges against Sonne, exaggerated or not, involve weapons, explosives and intimidation.

Can't you be charged with just about anything a police officer deems necessary to bring you into the station, but you aren't guilty of any of them until proven so? I thought that's how it worked but clearly I'm mistaken.

No, it doesn't work like that. That only applies to sentencing someone of a crime. But someone says "By all accounts, he is a saint!" you can say "Not by all accounts, as some claim that he has committed a crime" even if he hasn't been proven guilty yet. It's actually quite a simple concept to grasp.

Though, I mean, the question of Malicious intent does bring up some good points. If I fire a weapon to shoot an Apple off someones head and I miss and end up murdering them, despite how un-malicious my intent is, do I still have to pay for the crime?

Depends. You don't have to pay for murder. Now, you might have committed other crime (such as gross negligence or the like) and need to pay for that. It is kinda like with drunken driving: The act of knowingly r

Well yes, when you put it in the literal sense like that, but perhaps we have different ideas of the words "Accounts", because I imagine someone who has an "account" on it has some evidence to support their claim. I mean, by the logic you're implying I could say "You are not by all accounts innocent of raping and murdering a 14 year old girl." Perhaps you've heard that line before and see where I'm going with it, you can say it right back and thus we've completed invalidated any use of the word account.

It's as patently absurd an excuse as those people who justify looking at child porn by claiming to be "hunting it down to report to the police" (incidentally, I never hear in those cases that the people arrested have previously reported X incidents of offending material that they've found in the past, they're always incredibly unfortunate to be discovered on their first attempt). If you're planning on helping out the police, the first thing you should do is speak to the police. The chances are they will tel

Of course it happens. Do a simple google search for "false arrest" with your state or province name, and you'll find lawyers who advertise as specialists in this type of case. They wouldn't be offering the services if it wasn't helping to pay their bills.

In the United States at least, the real issue is whether or not the claim of "false arrest [wikipedia.org]" shows a violation of "clearly established law". Law enforcement officials are granted qualified immunity against "false arrest" claims, with the qualifier bein

Nah, they'll just tack on a "resisting arrest" charge and then drop the original charge. Tadah, they're holding you for a legit reason, even if they had to bounce you off a wall to get you to start resisting.

I wish it was the same over here in the UK, alas in reality, it tends to be that the police will arrest people for non arrestable offences (eg taking photos of uniformed police officers on duty) and then will make something up if they cannot find a legitimate reason to press charges, usually it involves "resisting arrest"...

Though, I mean, the question of Malicious intent does bring up some good points. If I fire a weapon to shoot an Apple off someones head and I miss and end up murdering them, despite how un-malicious my intent is, do I still have to pay for the crime?

Depends on how the statute is written. Murder requires 'malice aforethought', which is missing in an accident. Manslaughter generally doesn't depend on malice (or aforethought), although negligence is often taken into account.

I think this is like trespassing: it only matters if you intended to be there (or were unreasonably negligent), not if you intended to cause harm. Intending to cause harm would simply be an additional charge, yet the trespassing charge would still stick regardless of malice.

Over a billion dollars. A billion fucking dollars. Canadian. Citizen's. Dollars. (Our exchange rate is about par.) That's.1% of our GDP and.25% of our national debt. Think about that.

It's a four-day event. That's $300 Million a day, or 12.5 Million an hour, or 208 thousand dollars a minute. (3.5 thousand PER SECOND.)

I'm all for making sure that we've got a secure event, but for that they could have bought an Aircraft Carrier and parked it in the middle of Lake Superior and had an impenetrable fortress. Okay, so some of the G20 don't like the cramped quarters on a military vessel. They could have rented a cruise ship and hauled in, let's say Halifax and VDQ (Canadian Patrol Frigates, our ships-of-the-line) for security. (Or Montreal if they wanted to show off the new Cyclones) If someone else (like POTUS) wanted more security, they could task a Nimitz to accompany the group for the duration. The same with anyone else -- you want more security, bring in a warship.

The only reason this guy has gotten arrested is because he saw this insanity and wondered "how effective is it really" and proceeded to tell everyone he knew (and a whole bunch of people he didn't know) that he planned to test the security of the thing.

I am so glad I quit being a Conservative years back, when they promised to never ever ever ever tax income trusts. And then they did, about 6 months after the elections, and my eyes were opened, and I said "Oh. All politicians are lying, cheating bastards." So when MP James Moore, a Conservative, decided to deride copyright reformers as "radical extremists" who "don't have any interest in reforming copyright" and have "babyish views" of it, I wasn't surprised any more than when other Conservatives decided to spend a billion dollars on G20 security.

My point is, every single person in office can be expected to be a lying, cheating bastard. So I think you're right; no Tory gets to complain about adscam or Liberal waste as the height of calumny. They've treated their term in office like it was a race to outspend and outlie the Liberals, and despite the difficulty of the goal, they've achieved it. By the same token, however, the Liberals, who set the bar for the Tories to pass, don't get to complain about this, either. The Bloc Quebecois, who spend all their time extorting similar volumes of cash from the rest of Canada by threatening to disrupt the ruling party's voter base, don't get to complain about it. No party has any right to complain about other parties' wasteful spending, because every party spends criminally while in power. So if one party's crimes prevent them from complaining about another party's crimes, Parliament Hill would get really quiet.

I think, instead, maybe we ought to object to wasteful government spending no matter what party we object to, belong to, or support. I think we ought to object to wasteful spending because it harms Canadians, and not to score points for our favoured party. So I decry the Conservatives spending $1B, and I decry the Conservatives for implementing the GST in the Mulrouney years, and I decry the Liberals for implementing the NEP that destroyed two provinces' economies for a decade, and I decry the Liberals for adscam. There's plenty of blame to go around and no reason to single out a certain party's sins, or assume the other parties are any better.

We have officially reached insane levels of polarization in the reporting of this event. Law claims he is basically a terrorist, but claim that he is an independent researcher seeing how well our tax dollars are being spent holds water, and gives the police a very good reason to lie.

How much time in advance did the Canadians have to put this together in, was it enough to build a hotel or whatever? Besides, it is irrelevant what you build if you still have to secure it, and securing a totally new structure from scratch is probably much more difficult than an existing one.

I don't really know what went into the 1 Billion, I am interested to see, but to put a blank statement that the fraud perpetrated by the former government is the same thing as spending a billion or whatever on security

I still have moderator points, but I haven't found '-1 Wrong and somewhat clueless' or '-1 Too stupid for a troll' option, so I'll just elaborate.

Your statement about the argument being bullshit is bullshit.
Just like in case of BP not spending the necessary money and not securing the Gulf of Mexico properly and now paying tens of billions for it + all that oil in the water, imagine if a representative of any country got hurt or killed, what that would do to the image of the country.

Well, first of all, thanks for being civil, that really helps to get your point across.

Also as one of the people replying in the same thread pointed out, comparing BP disaster and G20 meeting is a false dichotomy, if you don't see it let me spell it out -- one is ecological disaster and the other is federal government are just being assholes, if anything G20 meeting reminds me of Mulroney farewell tour.

But since we are talking about BP, your argument is complete bullshit BP is liable, but it's a corpo

and costs of 'cleaning up' disasters are much higher than costs of preventing them.

And your point being?

If a government wants to, has a political will and the correct structure (read: is not neck deep in taking 'contributions' and generally relying on the corporations for the (re)elections) then nothing at all can stop a government from suing.

Actually, your argument is far more spurious. Allow me to poke some holes in it. First, you have not countered any of my claims. You have put forth two unrelated points and hope that an oil spill caused by recklessness and a luge accident caused by poor design somehow justify spending a billion dollars on security.

What is the cost of security for these dignitaries at home? Do they spend $3500 every second (cumulatively, of course) on their security? The fencing is $1500 per metre. (or yard, for the Am

Actually, in those four words you've managed to fail at history, political science, and the Internet.

The political spectrum shows socialism on the left-hand side and fascism on the right. Fascism is not restricted to 1930s-1940s Germany. Rather, it is when the state enforces its will upon your own and individuals get little or no freedom. It's in the first paragraph on Wikipedia, for crying out loud. For example, adding restrictions on abortion, gay marriage, and copyright legislation are all fascist mo

Unlike Americans, most Canadians have had some level of military training

Uh, what are you basing this on? We don't have mandatory military training here, so only those who willingly join up have *some* level of military training. It seems like you're pulling the explosive's thing out of your ass as well.

We do have more guns per capital than in the States and a heck of a lot less gun related crimes per capita then in the States as well.